Zimbabwe in collapse as other African countries advance
By: Jim Jones
Posted: '01-AUG-05 16:52' GMT ? Mineweb 1997-2004
JOHANNESBURG (Mineweb.com) -- Way back in the 19th century the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin propounded a singular view of the society of his day. It needed to be totally destroyed, he proclaimed, so that a decent system could emerge from the ashes of the ruined old.
Well, the ideas of Bakunin and his disciples failed to occur in the industrial countries of the time. The Soviets essentially proscribed Anarchism and anarchist thought, and then spent decades trying to destroy mother Russia to re-build it in their mould. The KGB types who still run their vast country have shifted their focus to enrichment of their own associates and, as in the case of Yukos, have re-taken control from the oligarch who managed to corner vast swathes of the country? oil wealth.
Mao? attempts to smash China? heritage through the cultural revolution came to nothing. And his successors have swung, if not to people? democracy, to something that is starting to approach the rampant capitalism of the 19th Century.
But Africa, during what is nearly half a century of progressive independence from colonial rule, has shown every sign of following the Bakuninite pattern ·some of the continent? dictators and strong men more successfully than others.
Tanzania was dragged into poverty by the benighted Ghandi-style economic policies of Julius Nyerere, the East African nation? first president. The venal policies of Mobutu Sese Seko destroyed for decades whatever chance an independent Congo (first renamed Zaire and subsequently renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo) might have had of pulling itself out of the legacy of Belgium? crass colonial practices.
The looting of the Congolese personal fiefdom Belgium? king Leopold was followed by colonial exploitation and, then, by progressive pillaging by indigenous power-brokers and leaders.
Independent Zambia run by the publicly avuncular Kenneth Kaunda started its post-colonial life full of promise based on its mineral riches. But Kaunda nationalized the copper mines and then proceeded to pay out the mine owners, Anglo American and RST, in hard currency derived from copper-mining profits. That, ironically gave Anglo or, at least, its Minorco offshoot the seed-corn hard currency capital to establish itself as a force in the mining industry outside Africa.
All three countries are starting to emerge from the years of economic decline and lack of investment. Sure, they are not entering a Bakuninite paradise, they are re-entering a world in which capitalism allocates resources more efficiently than any government or any tin-pot dictator. Foreign mining companies are working all over these countries, enticed by rich mineral deposits and government policies designed to attract investment in a world where the search for investment capital I becoming daily more competitive.
Still Bakunin? flame of social regeneration might appear to be burning brightly in one country that seemed to have reached independence with one of the continent? more-promising economic and legal structures ·Zimbabwe, the old Rhodesia. It gained independence with a stressed but functioning mining sector, a commercial agricultural sector feeding the nation and a major world player in export cash crops such as tobacco and constitutional and legal systems that seemed designed to treat people as people.
A quarter of a century later, Zimbabwe is in economic and social melt-down, giving a bitter irony to the old pre-independence joke that parodied the tourism slogan: ?ome to Rhodesia and see Zimbabwe Ruins. Come to Zimbabwe and see Rhodesia in ruins.·
Now the country? white population is less than one-tenth of its total at independence. In the Eighties President Robert Mugabe unleashed his North Korean trained special forces on Matabeles who did not support his Zanu-PF party. And now he is busy destroying the homes and livelihoods of three-quarters of a million Shona and Matabele people ·a significant percentage of the entire population. Taking a lesson from Cambodia? Pol Pot, the autocratic Mugabe and his enriched henchmen are driving people out of the towns and cities to the countryside where agriculture has been largely destroyed by widespread confiscation of (largely) white-owned commercial farms and their redistribution to his cabinet ministers and military brass. His is a crime against humanity.
Kofi Annan? special envoy Anna Tibaijuka pulled no punches in her report to the UN on the sheer destruction, starvation and cruelty Mugabe has unleashed on his own people.
But just as Rhodesia? prime minister Ian Smith could, for years, rely on an apartheid South Africa for support during the years in which he clung to power, Mugabe has been encouraged to believe that he will continue to enjoy the economic support of a South Africa headed by president Thabo Mbeki. He has already had the begging bowl out, seeking an estimated $700 million in emergency financial support from the South Africans. That would have helped him, perhaps, pay the $290 million Zimbabwe was supposed to have repaid to the IMF last week.
Mbeki is concerned that total collapse will lead to a flood of desperate Zimbabweans into South Africa -- 3 million of Zimbabwe? 15-million citizens are already living and working in South Africa, giving rise to a back-lash from many ordinary South Africans who see their jobs being taken by their country? energetic northern neighbours. But Mbeki remains reluctant to criticize Mugabe? follies, in public at any rate, preferring what he calls ?uiet diplomacy· That ?iplomacy·has patently failed.
And now Mugabe has been scampering around Beijing seeking money to support his increasingly-ramshackle regime and apparently pledging his country? minerals for decades and offering mining rights to Chinese miners in exchange for support. Mugabe? government has pillaged the farms. Now it is on the brink of pillaging what remains of the mining sector, even those new mines set up under his government in terms of what were supposed to have been cast-iron guarantees against expropriation.
Even when Mugabe shuffles off this mortal coil, will his successors be likely to change tack unless absolutely forced to do so? In private, cynical, unscrupulous foreigners who have invested in Zimbabwe often declare that they have the Zanu-PF party bosses in their pockets and that they have also ?ought·party bosses in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Pillaging, as the Congo/Zaire showed, can come wave upon wave as each group in power takes its turn at the trough.
What would Bukanin advise? Clearly that neither Mbeki or Beijing should even contemplate funding Mugabe. Better let Zimbabwe collapse into total hell and destruction. Then, and only then, can it emerge in a decent state.
While that might be great for anarchist theorists, it is hardly anything prospective investors in Africa would find useful. They are focusing on investments in countries whose leaders have stared into the pit and who have put in place policies designed to attract, encourage and protect prospective foreign investors. |
